Harrogate one punch killer jailed

A man who killed a work colleague with one punch during a night out in Harrogate has been jailed for six years.

Phillip Patrick Begley, aged 44 and of Wellington Road, Bridlington, was found guilty of the manslaughter of Paul Morrison at Leeds Crown Court today (Thursday July 2), following a four-day trial.

Begley was also found guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm for an attack on Paul’s friend, Peter Bell, and was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment to run consecutively.

The jury of seven men and five women found Begley guilty after hearing he had punched the pair in revenge for ‘horseplay’ and ‘banter’ earlier in the night.

The men had met in Harrogate on the evening of November 1 last year, where they went for a drink in the Wetherspoons Winter Gardens pub, in Parliament Street.

Prosecuting Nicholas Askins said: “There was the usual good humoured exchanges between the men of the group, nothing but a bit of harmless fun. The banter became more raucous as the evening progressed, though no one was drunk.”

When inside the Winter Gardens Pub, the jury heard, Mr Morrison pushed Begley to the floor in an incident described as ‘horseplay’ by Mr Askins.

At around 7.30pm,Paul and Mr Bell were in the beer garden at the back of the pub when they were approached by Begley.

Mr Askins said there was ‘an unremarkable exchange of banter’ in the beer garden before Begley punched Paul in the face and he fell backwards hitting his head on the base of a pillar.

Paul, who was aged 51 and from Burton Leonard, sustained a serious head injury and was taken to Harrogate District Hospital, where he spent almost three weeks fighting for his life before he sadly passed away.